Thursday, December 4, 2008

With the holiday season upon us and various conflicting agendas we are taking a hiatus from meetings, only for the month of December. We have a super exciting 3D modeling demonstration loosely scheduled for January 2009, which will be lead by a couple of professional game modelers.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Approx 10 people attended.We had 3-4 new members attending which was very cool.Tony, Rich, and the others who's name I didnt catch, Thanks for coming out guys!

2 people brought their reference images on CD/DVD as requested for Luke (Earendil) who is working on a project compiling reference images from/for the group.He is asking folks to burn on CD/DVD their reference photos to compile a master library of images for everyone to share. So if you have a cool reference folder or two, or dozens, please feel free to burn it and turn it over to Luke.

Mike Vaillancourt (Undertow) started the creature ideation demos with some thumbnails in Painter. He talked about how and why he works that way. He shared some helpful tips on working in 3/4 pose and how to properly weight the creature, as well as the importance of knowing your anatomy, whether it be human or animal. He created a handful of thumbs and proceeded with the crowd chosen thumb. He brought the crowd selected thumbnail to about halfway through the design process.

Dan Ciurczak (Soulkarl) then took the drivers seat and showed a slideshow of the reference images he accumulated prior to embarking on his own Demon image. Dan prepared and illustrated his techniques with Photoshop.He stressed how much of production art needs to be knocked out in a rapid fashion and the techniques he shared were geared toward this approach.

Through using a base photographic image, he melded various photo references and influences into his image. All the while Dan was tweaking and warping and succesfully integrating these images into the final piece. Dan also did a short demonstration on simple brush creation in Photoshop.

Mike V. had also stressed earlier in the meeting the importance of going that final extra mile on our artwork and throwing a little time and graphic design in to accent the actual artwork and to really make it as polished looking as possible. Through some fairly basic Adobe Illustrator work and a little Photoshop he showed how this could be done and how it truly would help sell the piece. These suggestions consisted of choosing the appropriate typeface/font, accentuating the piece by color picking from it and using this in the chosen font, and applying artist creds and copyright information as well.

Details for the next meeting (ie where/when) will be provided here as soon as they are worked out. We may need to be a bit maleable on when it is convenient for both Vermillion and the sketch group only in the month of December. But check back and we'll keep you posted!

People please chime in on what types of foundational demos/meetings you would like to see or things you want clarified, as well as topics or demos for the 2nd meetings of the month, the advanced skills meetings.

One of the upcoming advanced meeting demos will most likely be another joint demonstration. At that time Lou Holsten (Skrubbles) and Trevor Crandall (Fatkid), will do a demo geared towards workflow and techniques pertaining to high end 3D modeling for games using a handful of 3D applications.

Please feel free to spread the word about the group to anyone you feel would be interested.

Mike is a working art professional for many years. Mike is probably best known for his work in developing and art directing the Cthulu Tech intellectual property.

Mike will put on a digital demonstration of his creature ideation process, whilst taking suggestions and questions from the group.Come join this rapidly growing group of artists and have some fun!Seattle Sketch Group meets twice a month with a focus on both foundational skills as well as advanced digital demonstrations.